The Master

“Well, your knives are really dull! It’s obvious there’s no man of the house.”

Failing to slice the sausage for sandwiches, I shot Svetka a reproachful look. She couldn’t care less! She just shrugged, as if it wasn’t her problem that I needed to cut something.

“I usually buy everything pre-sliced. It suits me just fine,” my friend started up her old song again. “No one nagging me, no one demanding to be fed, have their laundry done, or the house cleaned. And satisfying physiological needs isn’t a problem these days anyway. Living alone is great, in short.”

“Uh-huh! We’ll see how you sing after you hit thirty.”

Svetka is generally all independent and self-sufficient. An emancipated woman. As soon as she got a job, she moved out from her parents’ place and started renting. She’s been in this one-room apartment for a month now. She can’t stop admiring it: an old building, ceilings nearly three meters high, a wonderful park view from the windows. Peace and quiet. And the fact that it’s far from the metro? Not a problem. Svetka has a car. Used, but her own.

“You know, if I ever did get someone, it would only be for background. Just so there’s someone in the apartment. Lately I’ve been feeling a bit uneasy here. Little rustling sounds and things. Dishes clanking at night, as if,” Svetka shuddered and fell silent, apparently embarrassed by her moment of weakness.

“That’s a house spirit deciding to take over the household since the mistress is such a slob,” I joked. It was obvious she wasn’t happy she’d brought it up. “Would you care to sample these delightful canapés prepared by my own hands?”

My hacked-up sandwiches were served, and the conversation drifted back into the usual friendly chatter between two girlfriends. We sat and talked until about nine, and then I headed home.

I’m an early bird and go to bed fairly early to get enough sleep. So when at eleven-thirty my sweet slumber was interrupted by the ringtone I’d set specifically for Svetka, my first thought was to send her to hell and call her back around six or seven in the morning. But the phone rang so persistently that I had to answer.

“What the—”

“Irochka, dear! Please come over! I’m so scared!”

Her voice trembled in the receiver, breaking into sobs.

“Where are you?” I started groping for my clothes.

“In the park near my building,” Svetka whimpered softly.

“Should I call the police?” I frantically ran through scenarios in my head that could have reduced my friend to this state.

“No! Don’t call anyone! Just you, Ira, please! Come quickly, I’m so cold out here.”

“Wait there, I’m on my way!”

And I don’t even have a car! I had to urgently call a taxi since it takes an hour and a half by public transport to get to Svetka’s place.

Shoving a bill at the driver and not waiting for change, I ran into the park. On the playground, hunched over, sat Svetka, dressed in a home T-shirt and leggings. At the end of October!

Looking at my shivering friend, I realized I shouldn’t have dismissed the taxi. What an idiot!

“Svetik, sweetheart, how are you?” I asked, placing a hand on her shoulder.

Svetka looked up at me with tearful eyes and whispered through bluish lips:

“Not here. What if he sees?”

“Who sees? Maybe we should call the police after all?”

“No! Let’s just get out of here. I’ll tell you everything.”

My presence calmed her a little. She glanced around, considering where we could go at midnight. Apparently finding no good options, she suggested we go to my place. I sighed, took off my jacket, gave it to her, and started dialing the taxi service again. And I’m not exactly rolling in money, taking taxis back and forth like that.

The entire ride, Svetka sat silent, staring at the floor.

Finally, we were at my place. Svetka warmed up in the shower while I tried to remember where I kept my emergency stash for unforeseen situations.

Over cognac and sandwiches, Svetka told me what had happened that evening.

After our get-together, she developed a headache and decided to go to bed early.

She tossed and turned for a long time out of habit (normally you can’t drag her to bed before half past midnight) and finally drifted off. She was awakened by noise in the kitchen, some kind of clanging.

The noise was so distinct that there was no way to blame it on “imagining things” or the wind.

Svetka decided to check the kitchen—maybe burglars had broken in and were stealing her spoons.

She was irritated: her head hurt, she was sleepy, and now there was noise. Maybe she was groggy, but she didn’t feel much fear. So when she walked into the kitchen, she stood there for about a minute, frozen, staring at an unknown creature.

The fear came late, and its main cause was the knife in the thing’s hand, not the kitchen beast itself. That’s when panic and a primal sense of danger from the unknown set in.

Luckily, she had the presence of mind to grab her phone while running out of the apartment. Only once outside did she think it might have been good to grab her coat too—but no way was she going back. Back to that.

“And it was black, small, and shaggy, like an Angora cat. The fur hanging in icicle-like strands. And the arms—thin, long, jointed, like tree branches. Sticking out in different directions… five or six of them. No eyes visible, no mouth either,” Svetka paused, recalling the details. “Maybe they were hidden by the fur. And the main thing—it grabbed the biggest kitchen knife from the set and just stood there. In a threatening way, like it was about to attack.”

“Come on, maybe you just imagined it half-asleep? Or it was a hallucination. They say those can happen with severe headaches. We were joking about house spirits today. Maybe your imagination just overlapped with reality.”

On a warm kitchen with a shot of cognac, everything already seemed less frightening and unusual. Surely there was a perfectly logical explanation for what happened.

After making me promise to go back to her apartment with her the next day, Svetka went to sleep.

When we stepped into the hallway, we didn’t feel anything unusual. No mystical chill ran through us, no goosebumps on our backs. There was no smell of sulfur or rot in the air. Everything was ordinary. Just a hallway. Good thing Svetka had slammed the door shut when she fled. The apartment had stood unlocked all night, of course, but at least the door hadn’t been left open, inviting some opportunistic thief inside.

But what we saw in the kitchen made Svetka turn pale as a sheet.

I laughed nervously.

“Bet they’re all sharpened.”

On the table, laid out in a neat row, were all the sharp objects in the apartment—from kitchen knives to manicure scissors.